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December 04, 2010

Tiered Ruffle Skirt Tutorial

To make this tiered ruffled skirt, all you will need is :

knit fabric

elastic

thread (and lots of it!)

This is a tutorial for the tiers and ruffles only. If you need help making a basic skirt to start with, go here. Be sure to use knit fabric for this project (it needs to stretch or it won't work). Also, don't finish the bottom. We're going to finish it differently.

Okay, so you've cut out two rectangles and sewn them together into a skirt that will fit your daughter (or you!). Sew a casing at the top for elastic, but don't insert your elastic yet. I did, and spent the rest of the project wishing I hadn't. I was to lazy to take it out and then have to put it back in again, although in the long run, that probably would have saved me time. Anyway, your skirt should look like this. Notice that there is an opening for elastic.

Cut strips for your tiers. You want them the same width as your skirt, plus a little extra for seam allowance. The number of strips you have depends on how long you make them and how many tiers you want. They should be long enough to overlap each other and go all the way up the skirt. I wanted five tiers on my shirt, so I cut a total of 10 strips.

Here are four of them (laying on top of each other).

Okay, lets finish the bottom. I love this method of finishing knit fabrics. It's so easy, and looks pretty. All you need to do is set your machine to a zig zag stitch. I like to make the stitch length shorter than the default length for my machine. You can play around with length and width of the stitch on scrap fabric until you get what you want. Zig zag right on the edge of your fabric, stretching your fabric as much as you can as you go. This will cause your fabric to curl a little, giving you a ruffle effect.

When you're done finishing the bottom, your skirt will look like this, with the exception of the elastic at the top, because you are smarter than me.

Sew two strips together on both sides like in the picture. Again, only two sets are pictured, but I had a total of five sets.

Finish the bottoms the same way you did the bottom of your skirt.

Pin one of your tiers all the way around your skirt. Sew it near the top edge. There's no need to turn it under at the top, since knit fabric doesn't fray. Keep going with all your tiers, making sure that the bottom ruffled edge covers the stitching of the tier below it.

If you want an unfinished look like I did with this skirt, you can do the top tier the same way. If you want a more finished look, pin the top tier on upside down. Stitch close to the raw edge.

When you fold the tier down, it will look nice and finished. Now you can insert the elastic and sew the opening to the casing shut.

This is adorable and I cannot wait to try it! A couple of questions: is your basic skirt really double the circumference of your little girl's waist? It doesn't look that wide. Also, how tall is each tier?Thank you--this is absolutely adorable!

Thank you for the replies Terra--they make sense! I have a skirt for me from Matilda Jane like this and didn't have the guts to try it for my daughter. I can't wait to get started now! Thank you again!

Thank you for this! I'm making the ruffled scarf and now I'm thinking I may make the skirt too! But, I do have one question... how did you start and end? My needle wants to push the fabric down in to where the bobbin is at the beginning corner... know what I mean? (I'm a novice, obviously hehe) Thanks!

I had that problem too. I figured out that if you start about an inch away from the corner and go down the whole thing and then come back and finish that inch the other way its easier. At the end you can just pull the fabric through before it gets pulled down into the bottom. Hope that helps! Let me know if you need clarification.

The Fine Print

Please feel free to use any of my tutorials for personal or small-scale commercial use. If you are making something to sell, a link to my blog is appreciated. Please do not use any of my pictures to sell your items. You are welcome to link to this blog, but do not republish an entire post without permission. Under NO condition are you allowed to use pictures of my children's faces. I make no guarantees as to the accuracy or completeness of any information found on this blog or on sites linked to. I try to be accurate about the positives and negatives when I post pattern reviews. The exception is patterns I've tested. Since I don't usually sew a garment using the final version of the instructions before I share my project, my review of the instructions/sizing might not reflect the end product accurately, so I don't usually go into detail about the pros and cons.